How Can Volkswagen Improve Their International SEO?

Running an international company is difficult in every aspect. Foreign market provides not only new opportunities, but also poses new threats. This applies to every business. Today we will analyze Volkswagen´s problems in their international SEO strategy and show how geotargeting can be more precise.

Problem #1 Page language doesn’t match the query

Let’s go to google.co.uk and search for the keyword: vw multivan. It refers to the model of the car and do not have any location attachment. What do we get? German page (.de domain) appears 2nd in the search results. Moreover, no UK version is available when we are there. And we are left with 2 options: go back and do another search or browse the page trying to remember German classes we had long time ago. As you can see, it is not very convenient. Far better way would be to choose language you want after clicking on the page. The same problem goes for keywords: vw passat variant and vw golf variant.

Source: www.google.co.uk

Source: google.co.uk

OK, what can be done?

Language of the keyword should match the search result page. In case with general keywords it would be reasonable to have .COM version, or an English language version of the .DE website .DE/en, depending on whether or not the product is offered in the UK

We can set hreflang to let search engines know how the two language versions are related

We can also redirect user to the proper page using their browser language settings

Set geographic target in Google Search Console

Problem #2 No localized page

This time lets visit google.fr and search for volkswagen en allemagne (which means Volkswagen in German). Although we have the word Germany in the query, we search in the French language. Therefore, we expect localized page to appear. However, we get page in German, which again is not available in other languages.

Source: www.google.fr

What is now?

Make sure that there is a French language version (volkswagen.de/fr/) of the local ccTLD (.DE) to match the language in the query: volkswagen en allemagne

Again, we can set hreflang to let search engines know how the two language versions are related

We can modify settings in the Google Search Console to return pages based on user’s location

We can also set redirection based on the searches browser language settings (redirect the user with French set to the /fr/ language version)

Here at GFluence we help various businesses with executing their international SEO strategy to its fullest potential. Check full spectrum of services that we can provide for you.